Cloning and Stem Cell Research

A recent essay by Brendan Foht in the Washington Post reveals the backwards logic of scientists who advocate for human gene editing and those who also support the idea that embryos that have been genetically modified must be destroyed. The advent of CRISPR technology allows for the possibility of us forever altering the human genome […]

In 2002, the government of Belgium formed the Federal Evaluation and Control Commission for Euthanasia. Last week, they announced that seven of the seats are vacant—citing particular trouble finding doctors who would serve. There are two reasons for this: One, many doctors remain uncomfortable with wielding the power of medicine to kill their patients. Second, […]

1. California Governor Signs Physician Assisted Suicide Law On Monday, Governor Jerry Brown signed California’s physician assisted suicide bill into law—stating that he would like to have the option if he were terminally ill. This decision is both selfish and reckless, and undermines the entire profession of medicine, which is aimed at healing and has […]

California Legislators Attempt Sly Maneuver to Reintroduce Physician Assisted Suicide On the heels of a California judge refusing to allow for physician assisted suicide in the state, lawmakers have once more reintroduced legislation on the matter—this time in a special session hoping to bypass legislators that oppose the practice. In a sly move, these legislators […]

Mitochondrial Disease Research Makes Progress Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal reported on the fact that two new experiments—one using cell reprogramming and the other using cloning—have led to progress against mitochondrial disease. While we encourage ethically informed research that could reduce or eliminate the disease, we oppose any type of experimentation that will […]

My taskmasters at the CBC never allow me to rest on my laurels. Fresh off several years of stellar prognosticating, I am now forced to answer the question: “But what have you predicted, lately?” Okay, let’s take a look. Oh! Oh my. Please remember, the following predictions are what I see happening. They do not […]

Buried deep in an encouraging story about another advance in turning skin cells into stem cells, we see more evidence of biotechnology’s ultimate human cloning goal. First, the good news. An acid bath may be able to replace viruses in transforming skin cells into stem cells that can become any type of cell in the […]

Can you believe a year has come and gone since I last told you what would happen, before it happened, in bioethics? Maybe it’s my increasing age, but time is passing too fast! So, how did I do? Not as well as in years past, but still an A-. Let’s take a look: The Affordable […]

Proposition 71, which brought the misbegotten California Institute for Regenerative Medicine into being, was sold to voters in a blatantly mendacious campaign based on embryonic stem cell hype of CURES! CURES! CURES! and outright lies about the then state of regenerative medical science. Its administration has been marked by arrogance, conflict of interest, cronyism. And […]

In California, a bill that would allow researchers to pay women for their eggs is currently on the Governor’s desk, awaiting his signature or veto. At the CBC we have been very busy, working to make the very real risks of the egg retrieval process known so that both lawmakers and the public are fully […]

Over at my biweekly First Things column, I urge that laws be passed outlawing all human cloning. Cloning, by the way, is the act of creating an embryo through asexual means such as somatic cell nuclear transfer (which I explain in the article). It is not the birth of a cloned baby. That is one […]

Embryology text books will tell you that when fertilization is completed, an embryo is formed. That, is, a new individual organism exists — which remains the same organism until death. For scientific purposes, the developmental stages of the embryo are given different names. When it is one-celled, it is a zygote. When it is about […]

The mainstream media — under the influence of spin from “the scientists” — has been playing a game of hide-the-ball about the recent first human cloning success. For example, the LA Times threw a lot of dirt in the air by calling the success merely an “incremental step” toward human cloning. No. It. Was. Human […]

I just read an article that is a clear call for Germany to get in on the human cloning game. And as so often happens in this issue, it is filled with scientific inaccuracies — whether by intent or ignorance, I don’t know. First, the article in Deutche Welle, claims that the recent human cloning […]

Thanks to Brendan P. Foht, over at The Corner, for showing that it was misleading to claim that SCNT human cloning could not lead to a human pregnancy because there have been no successful cloned monkey pregnancies. But there have been cloned monkey pregnancies, with one embryo developing to the fetal stage with a heartbeat! […]

I learned about the first successful human cloning last Monday, but couldn’t write about it until Wednesday because of a news embargo. The peer reviewed paper in Cell was rushed to print because is a huge deal. But, much to my surprise, it only made mild news. There were two reasons for that I think. […]

The Los Angeles Times has waded in to the junk biology game, assuring us that no embryos are threatened in human cloning — WHEN THE WHOLE POINT OF HUMAN CLONING IS TO CREATE AN EMBRYO! From the editorial, “The Specter of Human Cloning:” The team at OHSU, which disclosed its work in a paper published […]

I now see that the old dishonest game is well afoot: Biotech types and media pretending that human cloning isn’t really human cloning unless a baby is born. The cloning breakthrough is instead being spun as skin cells into stem cells! As if it were induced pluripotent stem cells, which really do turn skin into […]